Bloodmagic (Blood Destiny 2) (7 page)

He snapped forward in a blur of movement and gripped both my arms, leaning in close.  “You’re not going anywhere, Mackenzie.” 

Shit, shit, shit.  He must be able to smell me now.  I sent up a silent prayer to anyone who might be listening to keep the Cornish pack safe.  The panic inside me melded with the heat of my bloodfire and I exploded into a twist to wrench away from him.  What I hadn’t counted on was just how strong Corrigan actually was as I barely managed to move a couple of inches.  Without thinking, I started squirming and clawing, trying whatever I could to pull myself away from him. I punched into air and missed connecting with his body, lashed out with my feet trying to kick him, but he just shifted his weight against me until I was completely pinned against the wall.

He smelled clean with just a hint of spicy aftershave.  I waited for the inevitable realisation that my own scent was all wrong to hit him.   Maybe I could get away before I had to answer any questions about it.  And then I’d go and hide in a cave for the rest of my pitiful existence.  Isn’t that what dragons did anyway?  The silver needles were in holding my hair together at the back; if I could just reach out and grab one of them…I strained and just came up against the steel of his muscles.   His face swam forward and he looked me directly in the eyes, then he started to lean in forward until our noses were almost touching.  My heart was banging painfully against my ribcage and the fire inside me changed somehow.  It was transforming from an angry, scared, attack mode heat to something altogether more consuming, more passionate, more…

A door to my right swung open and a voice suddenly filled the room.  “My Lord Alpha!  There’s an intruder somewhere in the building, we need to –“

Corrigan turned and snarled at the voice, the owner of which immediately backed away with abject groveling apologies.  I rolled my eyes.  Not much had changed in the Brethren then.

The interruption had at least allowed me to regain some of my ragged emotions.  He’d obviously not noticed that I smelled like a human yet.  I had no idea why not but I had to keep my fingers crossed that it stayed that way.  Maybe he had a cold.  I cleared my throat.  “My Lord Alpha, I believe I mentioned earlier that I may have been exposed to some kind of, um, disease, on my way here.  I suggest you back away as it could very well be lethal.”

Corrigan stilled for a moment, his grip on my wrists tightening until I winced in pain.  “What kind of disease?”

He’d fallen for that?  Clearly the Lord Alpha wasn’t as intelligent as I’d once thought.  I widened my eyes to convey the horror even more dramatically.  “A terrible, terrible one.  It makes all your hair and teeth fall out and your skin turn green.  Then it starts to attack your nervous system making you throw up violently.”  I gestured to the remains of my earlier lunch now deposited in a sticky mess on his polished floor.  “As you see.  So you should stay away from me.  I’m sure it’s incredibly contagious.”

He appeared to relax infinitesimally and growled at me.  “I’ll take my chances.”  His slid his hands from my wrists up to my arms and gripped painfully.  “Now tell me where you’ve been, why you ran away and how you got here.  In that order.”

“I’m a rogue, my
Lord,
” I spat.  “I don’t have to answer to you anymore.”

“Funny,” he said softly, “I don’t think you ever answered to me, even when we first met.” 
Tell me now. 

He was using his Voice to command me.  This was too easy.  I looked into his emerald green eyes and stated firmly,  “No.” 

I was pretty sure that once shifters went rogue, their alpha’s Voice no longer worked on them so I could avoid having to pretend that I was compelled to answer.  What it did mean as well was that Corrigan still thought I was shifter, lack of shifter scent or not. I’d worry about the why later, right now I was just relieved.  For his part, however, he wasn’t as impressed at my bravura as I was, and he pulled his right hand away from my arm and slammed it around my throat, choking the breath out of me. 

“Mackenzie, you need to start talking before I rip it out of you.”

My bloodfire flickered back into its usual action at the violence.  I sent a quick thank you to whoever was looking down on me for that small mercy. Corrigan had moved enough that I could get some purchase with my legs so I pulled my knee up as hard as I could and shoved with every ounce of strength I had into his groin.  He immediately let his grip loosen from around my neck and gasped in pain.  I managed to move away from him and the wall, and into the centre of the room.

Corrigan rotated round and glared at me furiously.  He was obviously still in pain but trying not to show it.

“Who’s the big bad Lord Alpha now?” I taunted softly.

He snarled at me in return, sparks flying from his eyes.  A sharp knock came at the closed door and a muffled voice called through.  “My Lord Alpha?  Is everything okay?”

I blinked.  Oh fuck that was –

“It’s fine, Tom.  Go away.”  Corrigan’s voice was hoarse but he was obviously not going to be crippled for life.  Shame.  He watched me, raising his eyebrows.  “Do you remember your little wolf boyfriend, kitten?  It must be difficult for someone of your proclivity to keep track of everyone you sleep with.  Would it hurt you to know that he barely remembers you?  He won’t even mention your name and when I ask him – or his fiancée – they both just clam up.  You clearly have an interesting effect on those around you.”

So Betsy and Tom were engaged?  That was good news; in fact, I almost betrayed myself by smiling at the information that Corrigan had probably hoped would hurt my feelings.  I wondered as well whether the geas was still in place and that was why they both clammed up when he interrogated them about me.  Interesting…

I lifted up a shoulder and attempted to remain nonchalant.  “Pass on my sincerest congratulations to them both.  And now, my Lord, I must take my leave.” I glanced over at the windows, which were draped in some kind of opulent golden brocade curtain.  “Which floor are we on?”

“It’s the penthouse.” He smiled lazily at me.  “Fifteenth floor.”

Aah.

“I don’t suppose you’re well equipped for fire regulations and have a proper outdoor fire escape, do you.”

His smile grew broader.  “Unfortunately not.”

He started to walk towards me.  Fuck it.  I didn’t think I could pull the old knee defense trick again and he was just too strong for me to fight, even with all my blood blazing.  What now?

“Well, I hate to break up this little party but it’s time that we were going.”  Solus appeared in a wink of purple shimmer from seemingly nowhere at my left and grabbed my arm.

“You prick,” I yelled, without thinking.  “What did you do?  Get me out of here!”

“With pleasure, my lady.” 

And, with that, the air started to blur again and I could feel my stomach yet again churning.  I just had the chance to see confusion and bewilderment cross Corrigan’s face – an emotion I imagined he didn’t feel all that often – and then hear his snarled, “Mackenzie!” before Solus and I were slamming back onto to a cold, grey and wet Inverness pavement.

“That WAS fun!” Solus said with a grin, just as I turned around and punched him in the mouth.

Chapter Eight

Solus’ hand immediately raised up to his cheek where my fist had connected and he rubbed it with a look of hurt on his face.   I felt a momentary gleam of satisfaction that I’d finally managed to strike the stupid Fae.

“I don’t see why you’re so worked up,” he complained.

“Worked up?” I spat.  “Do you have any idea what you just did?  How many people you just put in danger because of some moronic stunt that you pulled just to show off?  You’re lucky your head is still on, Solus.”

His eyes took on an innocent sheen.  “Me?  All I wanted was to give you a little demonstration of what could happen if you continued to hide the truth from me.  Besides, you weren’t in any danger and neither was anyone else.”

“You fuckwit!  He thinks I’m a shifter!  If Corrigan puts his brain into gear and thinks for even a moment he’ll work out that I’m not.  Humans aren’t allowed to know that shifters even exist.  I lived with them for years – what do you think he’ll do to those people who hid me for that length of time?  The Lord Alpha of all the freaking shifters on the British Isles is not exactly the soft cuddly forgiving type.”

“Jeez, you’re a bit stressed out, aren’t you? First of all,” he ticked off his fingers, “you’re not human.  Second of all, it seemed like you were both having quite a good time.  And thirdly, did he smell you?  Did he notice that you’re not a shifter?”  Solus glared at me demandingly. “Well?”

“No,” I sputtered, “but that’s probably just because he was too surprised to notice at the time.  He’ll be sniffing around right now and then -”

“Seriously?  You don’t give Lord Corrigan much respect for his abilities, do you?  Whereas mine, naturally, are considerable.  If the Pack Lord was going to realise that you weren’t a shifter, don’t you think he’s smart enough to have scented it on you straight away?  Or do you really think he’s that dumb and vapid not to even inhale?”

I stared at him.  Actually, no I didn’t think Corrigan was that stupid, falling for tall tales about diseases aside.  I was still baffled as to how he’d not spotted immediately what I was – or, at least, what I wasn’t, anyway.  I’d gotten away with it once, after Iabartu had been killed and Julia’s potion had probably mostly rubbed off, but the reek of her corpse and her minion’s had covered mine.

Solus continued.  “Whilst I have no idea how you managed to hide your non-shifter stink from him and the rest of the Brethren before, it was patently obvious that you had.  I’ve been paying at least a little bit of attention.”  He folded his arms and looked smug.  “I covered your scent up, Rambo.  It is a simple thing.  The Lord Alpha would not have been able to note that anything was different about you from the last time you were together.”

The wave of relief that flooded over me was almost overwhelming.  “My name is Mackenzie.”

He shrugged.  “Whatever.  Rambo doesn’t suit you either anyway.  Not unless you fancy putting stripping to the waist and sticking a bandanna round your head, that is?” 

He leered at me suggestively.  Lunging forward, I aimed for his solar plexus but this time he managed to dodge me easily.  Fucking Fae and their stupid magic.

“Tsk, tsk,” he said, shaking his head.  “You don’t have much control over you powers, do you?”

“I don’t have any powers, you freak.”

“Other than being able to break out of an impenetrable faerie ring, of course.”

I jabbed his chest with my index finger.  “Stay the fuck away from me, Solus.”

Turning around, I stalked off in the direction of home.  Then I realised that my home security was hardly tight and that Solus might decide he wasn’t finished playing yet.  I spun round and passed him again, heading back towards Clava Books instead. 

He called out after me.  “Next time, I might not be so nice.  I might not bother hiding your smell.   You might want to keep me happy.”

His voice trailed off behind me.  I resisted the urge to look back and kept on walking.  At least Derek seemed to have crawled back into whatever hole he’d come out of, I thought darkly.  I had a lot of pent up fury that I needed to expel somewhere and it was probably a damn sight safer for him if he was out of the way.

I must have marched in double time back to the bookshop because I seemed to arrive there before I knew it.  I flung open the door, ignoring the furious jangling of the bell, and slammed it shut behind me.  Leaning against the doorframe I took a moment to calm myself down, pulling in deep measured breaths.  After a moment or two, Mrs Alcoon appeared from the back office.  She took one alarmed look at my face and then gently took me by the arm and led me into the kitchen where she inevitably flicked on the kettle.

“Goodness, what on earth has happened, Mackenzie?”

“I…,”  I looked at her calm reassuring face and dissembled quickly.  I felt the urge to tell her the truth, and certainly trusted her enough by now to know that my secrets would be safe.  I just couldn’t trust all the other irritants in my life not to concoct nefarious schemes to try to squeeze the information out of her.  I opted for a half-truth instead.  “There’s a guy.  He used to hang out at the pub where I worked before here – he’s the reason I had to leave.  Well, the reason I was fired, actually.  He came upon me in the street on the way home and…”

She patted my hand, softly.  “Oh my dear.  How terrible.  Did he hurt you?”

“Um, not really, I managed to get away this time but I’m worried about what he might do if I see him again.” 

I hoped her strain of clairvoyance wouldn’t detect the slight lie.  I had, after all, been set upon by Derek in the street.  But I’d sort of swapped my pronouns when I mentioned the guy who I was worried about seeing again.  Derek I could take care of easily myself – Corrigan, or indeed Solus, I might have a bit more trouble with.  She’d foreseen before that Corrigan wouldn’t ever come to Inverness and that Solus meant me no harm.  But that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t do harm ‘accidentally’ and that Corrigan wouldn’t just send some shifter minions in his place.  Besides, if her clairvoyant skills were that strong and reliable, she’d probably have been a fully fledged member of the Ministry of the Mages and I was almost completely sure that wasn’t the case.

Still, concern was clearly written all over her face.  Whilst I’d managed to avoid setting off her soothsaying warning system, I felt a bit guilty about not telling her the whole truth, especially when she was so obviously anxious about my welfare.

“Oh my dear Mackenzie, that sounds just awful, just simply awful.  I’ve not felt that anything bad like that will happen but then my feelings, as I call them, are hardly an exact science.”  Her face took on a pensive look.  “I hope you won’t think I’m intruding but I have a friend who might be able to help.”

I doubted that very much, not unless they happened to be a ridiculously powerful denizen of the otherworld .  Still I tried to look interested, just to play along and be polite.